Republicans renew calls for TikTok ban as anti-Israel posts dominate app

Published

1 year ago

November 6, 2023

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Republican lawmakers are increasingly concerned about a tide of anti-Israel content on TikTok during the war with Hamas and they are renewing their push to ban the China-owned app, The Post has learned.

While TikTok is highly secretive about the algorithms that distribute millions of short-form videos on the app daily, there are some telltale signs of the disproportionate amount of anti-Israel content on the app versus videos favoring Palestinians.

For example, the top result for the search phrase stand with Palestine had been viewed nearly 3 billion times as of Oct. 26, while the top result for stand with Israel was viewed just over 200 million times, according to one analysis that went viral on X.

TikToks own data obtained by Axios showed a similar gap in the US, with more than twice as many posts using the hashtag #StandwithPalestine as posts with #StandwithIsrael over the last two weeks.

The trends have worried prominent GOP lawmakers and officials some of whom, like Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), have called for a nationwide ban on TikTok over concerns that the app functions as a spying and propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist party.

Blackburn told the Post that it would not be surprising that the Chinese-owned TikTok is pushing pro-Hamas content to serve Chinas agenda which has increasingly aligned with the interests of rival nations such as Russia and Iran.

The CCP benefits by destabilizing the Middle East and pushing the United States to put more manpower back into the region, Blackburn said. The United States needs to ban this app that steals and spies on American users.

The tidal wave of pro-Palestinian content intensified earlier this month on TikTok, whose base of more than 150 million US users primarily skews toward Gen Z and millennials.

Scrutiny over TikToks role in the Israel-Hamas war included a recent viral thread composed by Jeff Morris Jr., managing partner of the venture fund Chapter One, who argued that Israel and its allies are losing the information war with high school & college students on the popular app.

A massive gap in the visibility of hashtags suggests that TikToks algorithm was amplifying pro-Palestine viewpoints, according to Morriss research.

Morris could not immediately be reached for comment.

Because the TikTok narrative is now so anti-Israel, the engagement flywheel encourages creators to support that narrative because its getting the most attention and creating anti-Israel content helps them increase their following.

TikTok had managed to escape the federal limelight as of late, but the apps central role in public discourse around the Israel-Hamas war could once again put them in the spotlight.

Gallagher, who serves as chair of the House Select Committee on China, told The Post that TikTok has become ground zero for disinformation and pro-Hamas propaganda and warned TikTok parent ByteDances ties to Beijing have made it difficult to separate organic viral trends from China-backed bots or influence campaigns.

We have zero visibility into whether the viral nature of this content is the result of user engagement, bot campaigns, or the CCPs covert influence, Gallagher said in a statement. All of this illustrates the fundamental problem with TikTok: it is an avenue for the CCP to covertly inject any message it wantsparticularly during a crisisinto the American bloodstream. We must act now to ban it.

Rubio noted that he has been warning that Communist China is capable of using TikToks algorithm to manipulate and influence Americans for quite some time.

Weve seen TikTok used to downplay the Uyghur genocide, the status of Taiwan, and now Hamas terrorism; This is further proof that the app needs to be banned and treated for what it is: foreign propaganda, Rubio said in a statement.

Last March, Rubio asked FBI Director Christopher Wray point-blank whether China could use TikTok to drive narratives aimed at stoking division in America. At the time, Wray acknowledged that it was not only possible, but the FBI was not sure that we would see many of the outward signs of it happening, if it was happening.”

A TikTok spokesperson pushed back on the lawmakers’ concerns, stating “there is no basis to these false claims.”

“Our Community Guidelines apply equally to all content on TikTok and we’re committed to consistently enforcing our policies to protect our community,” the spokesperson said. “The content on TikTok is generated by our community, and recommended based on content-neutral signals from users, and is not influenced by any government.”

The company said it regularly takes action to remove bot networks targeting American audiences, including some that originate in China. The company also noted that it sponsored the Anti-Defamation League’s “Concert Against Hate” this week, where honorees included Holocaust survivor Tova Friedman and her grandson, Aron Goodman.

The demographics of TikToks youthful user base could be another factor in the disparity. Morris cited a Harvard University poll showing that 51% of Americans aged 18 to 24 believed Hamas was justified in carrying out terrorist attacks that killed more than 1,200 Israeli civilians.

Meanwhile, a recent Reuters poll found 20% of people aged 18 to 24 go to TikTok for news, up 5% compared to last year. At the same time, public trust in traditional news outlets has dwindled.

TikTok touted its efforts to combat the spread of misinformation, noting in a recent blog post that it has removed over 500,000 videos and closed 8,000 livestreams in the impacted region for violating our guidelines.

Even as TikTok defends its recent actions, others note that antisemitism is a longstanding problem on the platform. Well before the Hamas attack, Israeli leaders were warning TikTok was spreading anti-Israel propaganda. Other individuals, like an Israeli actor, say TikTok has simply removed their videos that show how brutal the Hamas terrorists are.

Earlier this month, the European Union demanded that TikTok and fellow social media giant Meta provide details about their efforts to combat misinformation and hate speech related to the Israel-Hamas war.

TikToks efforts so far have failed to satisfy critics, including Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who stated TikTok is bad for your brain, bad for your kids, and if you needed another reason to stay awayits filled with antisemitic propaganda.

The TikTok spokesperson also pushed back on allegations of rampant antisemitism on the platform.

“TikTok stands firmly against hateful ideologies, including antisemitism, which have no place on our platform, the spokesperson said. We remove this content immediately when we identify it.

Meanwhile, Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, another advocate for a nationwide ban on TikTok, noted China has a demonstrated history of using TikTok for foreign influence campaigns that advance Communist Chinas geopolitical interests.

The average TikTok user is more likely to be exposed to content favorable to the CCP than other major social media platforms, and leaked documents previously showed that TikTok instructed moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Carr said in a statement. So it would not be surprising at all if the data show that the CCP has been using TikTok to influence public opinion on Israel and Hamas.

UK

Reform has put the two traditional parties on notice – and we don’t know where this ends

Published

2 hours ago

May 2, 2025

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Reform has put the two traditional parties on notice - and we don't know where this ends

British politics is changing after a night that saw a sensational, record-breaking victory by Nigel Farage in the North West.

That’s the conclusion of a nail-biting night that delivered more drama than expected and gives strong indications – though not yet certainty – about how politics is being reshaped for a new era, which means greater political unpredictability and challenges for the main parties in highly uncomfortable ways.

The significance of this morning’s results will be argued over for years to come.

Reform beats Labour by six votes; follow Politics latest

Hours after counting began, there are two big themes for definite.

The first is that Reform UK proved they continue to evolve into a mature and potentially lethal political force.

Across the country they are now winning votes in Labour areas as well as Conservative, and they have run both parties close in a number of key contests.

They achieved vote shares of 40% or more, twice their share at the General Election. They even won a seat from the Liberal Democrats.

The second is that while Labour was able to deliver a number of physiologically important mayoral wins – often by the smallest of margins – they need to go up a gear to fight.

Labour’s vote declined but did not collapse and they are still able to get “their people” to the ballot box from Bristol to Tyneside.

But in the most important battle of all – the North West seat of Runcorn and Helsby – they could not, and Reform UK pulled off a stunning triumph, taking the 49th-safest Labour seat in the country.

Nigel Farage and the team had poured huge amounts of time and resource into the seat, with multiple visits and the chairman Zia Yusuf on the ground to direct operations. It paid off.

By contrast, Sir Keir Starmer did not turn up once. Number 10 will be asking itself today whether a prime ministerial visit could have been worth those six precious votes.

It is true to say that politics has become so unpredictable because neither party knew what was about to happen.

The evening started with Reform UK hinting at victory, but by 2am Labour was quietly confident. By 3am, it had turned out neither really knew, and a full recount was launched after Reform UK was four votes ahead. After the recount, Labour had lost by six.

This is the moment Reform UK proved itself a protest party for Labour voters as well as Tories.

Significance for Reform is immense

The significance is immense. At last year’s general election, there were over 150 seats where the Tories lost because Reform UK got more votes than the margin by which the Conservatives lost to the winner.

Now this suggests that Reform UK has the capacity to mete out the same damage to Labour and puts the two traditional parties on notice that they face a threat.

Labour has already shown itself willing to bend because of the threat of Reform UK, slashing the aid budget to pay for more military spending and slashing Whitehall with a promise of more to come.

The question is, how much further can Labour go in this direction? In some of the council by-elections there was already evidence of bleeding to the Greens – a sign that more left-leaning one-time Labour supporters are deserting the party because they think it no longer represents them.

What course does this Number 10 chart now? A slew of announcements on immigration and slashing red tape – and risk a greater schism on the left – or end up in the mushy middle and pleasing no one? The choices are unappetising.

Then there is the challenge for the Tories.

For those hoping for a non-aggression pact on the right, today’s results suggest that Reform UK can credibly question whether they are a party of the right, given their success in Labour areas.

This is a complicating factor. Where does the logic heard in the leaked recording by Robert Jenrick – brought up by Nigel Farage this morning – take us now?

There will be those who point to UKIP’s success in the early 2010s and lack of impact in the 2015 election, and say that there is no certainty that Reform UK will fly.

Of course, there is a chance they may fade, particularly if their infighting gets worse.

But UKIP never achieved a breakthrough on the left like Reform UK has done to date, and its impact may never actually be in the seats that it wins.

Arguably in that early 2010 period, Farage and UKIP left an even bigger legacy without ever holding power: a Brexit referendum which he went on to win.

There are now lots of paths for what Farage has started to change Britain. We do not know where this ends.

Politics

Stablecoins: Depegging, fraudsters and decentralization

Published

2 hours ago

May 2, 2025

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Stablecoins: Depegging, fraudsters and decentralization

Opinion by: Merav Ozair, PhD

Lately, stablecoins are everywhere — this time around, headed by “traditional” financial institutions. Bank of America and Standard Chartered are considering launching their own stablecoin, joining JPMorgan, which launched its stablecoin, JPM Coin — rebranded as Kinexys Digital Payments — to facilitate transactions with their institutional clients on their blockchain platform, Kinexys (formerly Onyx).

Mastercard plans to bring stablecoins to the mainstream, joining Bleap Finance, a crypto startup. The aim is to enable stablecoins to be spent directly onchain — without conversions or intermediaries — seamlessly integrating blockchain assets with Mastercard’s global payment rails.

In early April 2025, Visa joined the Global Dollar Network (USDG) stablecoin consortium. The company will become the first traditional finance player to join the consortium. In late March 2025, NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) announced that it is investigating applications for using USDC (USDC) stablecoin and US Yield Coin within its derivatives exchanges, clearinghouses, data services and other markets.

Why the renewed interest in stablecoins?

Regulatory clarity and acceptance

Recent moves by regulatory bodies in the United States and Europe have created more straightforward guidelines for cryptocurrency use. In the US, Congress is considering legislation to establish formal standards for stablecoins, bolstering confidence among banks and fintech companies.

The European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation requires that stablecoin issuers operating within the EU adhere to specific financial standards, including special reserve requirements and risk mitigation. In the UK, financial authorities plan to conduct consultations to draft rules governing stablecoin use, further facilitating their acceptance and adoption.

The Trump administration executive order 14067, “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology,” supports and “promotes the development and growth of lawful and legitimate dollar-backed stablecoins worldwide” while “prohibiting the establishment, issuance, circulation, and use of a CBDC within the jurisdiction of the United States.”

This executive order, followed by Trump’s World Liberty Financial company launching a stablecoin called USD1, signals that this is the era of stablecoins, particularly those pegged to the USD.

Do we need more stablecoins?

The stablecoin landscape

There are over 200 stablecoins, most pegged to the US dollar. Two established stablecoins dominate the stablecoin landscape. Tether’s USDt (USDT), the oldest stablecoin, launched in 2014 and USDC, launched in 2018, capturing 65% and 28% of stablecoins market cap, respectively — both are centralized fiat collateralized.

Recent: Crypto wanted to overthrow banks, now it’s becoming them in stablecoin fight

In third place, a relatively new one, USDe, launched in February 2024, holds about 2% of the stablecoin market cap and has an unconventional mechanism based on derivatives in the crypto market. Although it runs on a DeFi protocol on Ethereum, it incorporates centralized features since centralized exchanges hold the derivatives positions.

There are three primary mechanisms of stablecoins:

Centralized, fiat-collateralized: A centralized company maintains reserves of the assets in a bank or trust (e.g., for currency) or a vault (e.g., for gold) and issues tokens (i.e., stablecoins) that represent a claim on the underlying asset.
Decentralized, cryptocurrency-collateralized: A stablecoin is backed by other decentralized crypto assets. One example can be found in the MakerDAO stablecoin Dai (DAI), which is pegged to the US dollar and encapsulates the features of decentralization. While a central organization controls centralized stablecoins, no one entity controls the issuance of DAI.
Decentralized, uncollateralized: This mechanism ensures the stability of the coin’s value by controlling its supply through an algorithm executed by a smart contract. In some ways, this is no different from central banks, which also don’t rely on reserve assets to keep the value of their currency stable. The difference is that central banks, like the Federal Reserve, set a monetary policy publicly based on well-understood parameters, and its status as the issuer of legal tender provides the credibility of that policy.

Depegging, risk and fraudsters

Stablecoins are supposed to be stable. They were created to overcome the inherent volatility of cryptocurrencies. To maintain their stability, stablecoins should (1) be pegged to a stable asset and (2) follow a mechanism that sustains the peg.

If stablecoins are pegged to gold or electricity, they will reflect the volatility of these assets and thus may not be the best choice if you are seeking a no-risk (or close to no-risk) asset.

USDe maintains a peg to the USD through delta hedging. It uses short and long positions in futures, which generates a 27% yield annually — significantly higher than the 12% annual yield of other stablecoins pegged to the USD. Derivative positions are considered risky — the higher the risk, the higher the return. Therefore, it encapsulates an inherited risk due to its reliance on derivatives, which runs counter to the purpose of stablecoins.

Stablecoins have been around for more than a decade. During this time, there were no major depegging fiascos other than the case of Terra. The collapse of Terra was not the result of a reserve problem or mechanism but rather the act of fraudsters and manipulators.

TerraUSD (UST) had a built-in arbitrage mechanism between UST and the Terra blockchain native coin, LUNA. To create UST, you needed to burn LUNA.

To entice traders to burn LUNA and create UST, the creators of the Terra blockchain offered a 19.5% yield on staking, which is crypto terminology for earning 19.5% interest on a deposit, through what they called the Anchor protocol.

Such a high interest rate is simply not sustainable. Someone has to borrow at such a rate or above for the lender to receive 19.5% interest. This is how banks make their profit — they charge high interest on borrowing (such as mortgages or loans) and provide low interest on savings (such as a traditional savings account or a certificate of deposit account). Analysis of the Anchor protocol in January 2022 showed it was at a loss.

One of the allegations in the lawsuits against Terraform Labs’ founders is that the Anchor protocol was a Ponzi scheme.

In March 2025, Galaxy Digital reached a $200-million settlement with the New York Attorney General over claims the crypto investing company promoted the LUNA digital asset without disclosing its interest in the token.

In January 2025, Do Kwon, founder of Terra, was found liable for securities fraud and is facing multiple charges in the US, including fraud, wire fraud and commodities fraud. If regulators are interested in preventing future cases like Terra, they should focus on how to deter fraudsters and manipulators from issuing or engaging with stablecoins.

Decentralization: Rekindling the premise of Bitcoin

Most stablecoins are centralized assets collateralized. They are controlled by a company that could conduct unauthorized use of customers’ funds or falsely claim that reserves fully back a stablecoin.

To prevent companies’ misconduct, regulators should closely monitor these companies and set rules similar to securities laws.

Centralized stablecoins run counter to the notion of blockchain and the premise of Bitcoin. When Bitcoin was launched, it was supposed to be a payment platform free of intermediaries, not controlled by any company, bank or government — a decentralized mechanism — run by the people for the people.

If a stablecoin is centralized, it should follow the regulations of any other centralized asset.

Maybe it’s time to rekindle the premise of Bitcoin but in a more “stable” fashion. Developing an algorithmic, decentralized stablecoin that is free of any control of a company, bank or government and reviving the core notion of blockchain.

Opinion by: Merav Ozair, PhD.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Entertainment

Comedian and actor Russell Brand arrives at Westminster Magistrates’ Court after being charged with rape and sexual assault

Published

3 hours ago

May 2, 2025

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Russell Brand has arrived at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, charged with sexual offences including rape.

The 49-year-old comedian, actor and author – who has most recently been based in the US – was charged by post last month with one count of rape, one count of indecent assault, one count of oral rape and two counts of sexual assault in connection with incidents involving four separate women between 1999 and 2005.

The allegations were first made in a joint investigation by The Sunday Times, The Times and Channel 4 Dispatches in September 2023.

The star, who is over 6ft tall, wore a black shirt which was unbuttoned to his mid-chest, black jeans and sunglasses.

He slowly made his way into the court’s main entrance, surrounded by a scrum of journalists and photographers. Remaining composed and looking around as he walked, he didn’t speak or respond to any of the questions shouted at him as he went.

In a video posted on X after he was charged, Brand said: “I am now going to have the opportunity to defend these charges in court, and I’m incredibly grateful for that.”

In a video referencing the court case posted on social media on Thursday, he said he welcomed the opportunity to prove his innocence and was “going to [his] country right now”.

The comedian has denied the accusations and said he has “never engaged in non-consensual activity”.

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